The recent and rapid growth in the transmission of infectious diseases has produced a heightened level of awareness in health care workers regarding such transmissions. In particular, the recent introduction of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) into the general population has cause a great deal of concern among health care practitioners for their own safety, and for the safety of their patients. In addition, other highly contagious diseases, such as hepatitis B, have become the subject of stringent procedures in health care facilities to prevent the spread of such diseases among patients and health care practitioners.
Many of these safety procedures focus on the use of shields or other devices to prevent the transfer of bodily fluids from the patient to the health care practitioner. In addition, stringent safety procedures have been adopted for disposal of needles, catheters, etc., which come into contact with bodily fluids.
The direct injection of medicaments into patients is an area of potential direct contamination and potential cross-contamination between patients which has received little attention. Traditionally, patients are injected with medicine contained in a vial which is drawn into a conventional hypodermic syringe. The medicine vial is closed by a self-sealing membrane. Medicine is drawn into the syringe by piercing the vial membrane with the hypodermic needle. Different patients may be injected with fluid from the same vial. Although different patients are infected through different sterile hypodermic needles, every time the medicine vial seal is broken by a needle, airborne contaminants residing on the needle are introduced into the vial. Thus, the vial becomes a common source of contamination for all patients. In addition, in the event that any needle, prior to its introduction into the medicine vial, is contaminated by other contaminants, such as bodily fluids, the medicine vial can become a common source of contamination for transmission of various diseases.
One solution to the above cross-contamination problem is the pre-packaging of medicines within individual hypodermic syringes. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,872,864, to Allen, Jr.; 213,978, to Dibble; 212,046, to Palmer; and Soviet Patent No. 1,204,215 all disclose hypodermic needles having their own fluid reservoirs. Nevertheless, each of the devices disclosed in these patents permits the entry of air containing microbial contaminants into its fluid reservoir chamber when the syringe portion of such device is charged from its fluid reservoir chamber. Furthermore, in each of these devices, the hypodermic needle is attached to the syringe in such a manner that the attachment point is exposed to possible contamination from the hands of a user. Thus, the problem of maintaining the medicine within these self-contained syringes in a sterile condition has not been fully resolved.
Thus, a need exists for a multiple-dose fluid delivery system which carries its own medicine for injection into a single patient and which maintains the sterility of the fluid throughout multiple doses.
A further need exists for a multiple-dose fluid delivery system which can medicate a patient with a variety of different medicines simultaneously while maintaining the sterility of each of the fluid medicaments.